[dreamstation (James)]

Afternoon all,

Lastnight was the first clear night in over a week so naturally I decided to drag the scope out for a look and with the moon all but gone I thought it'd be a good time to do some casual observing. I never intended on doing any planetary work, mostly just wanting to pan the sky and see what was around and maybe catch a glimpse of a meteor or two while we were at it, hence the 31 Nagler.

Later on in the night just before pack up I decided to center the scope on Jupiter for a quick look before bed. I'm not really sure how to describe my issue, so bear with me here. The view was quite pleasant, there's no doubt about that. But while looking through the eyepiece at Jupiter if I put my eye in a certain spot, there was some sort of strange distracting light which seemed to be 'floating' across the view inside the eyepiece. It almost looked like a big mosquito, or strangely enough like a seeded dandelion flower (you know the ones that go white, and when you blow it they fly to pieces). Moving my eye around a bit and it seemed to disappear.

I've never noticed this before as I've never used the 31 Nagler on such a bright object so it's got me buggered as to what I was seeing. Is this a problem with the eyepiece, a problem with my eyes, light getting in somewhere where it shouldn't? It's probably something simple, but as you can see I'm quite the novice. I should note that my partner could also see the light I am describing. We tried the 13 Ethos afterwards to see if the same light was there but we couldn't see it with that one.

Thanks all.